Legal precepts aren't international law, though.Originally Posted by LittleFuzzy
Legal precepts aren't international law, though.
Whatever, as long as you spare us the boilerplate.
The claim that a two party system leads to less extremism is being disproven in the US as a whole and in California more in particular. The fact that the state/government is being rendered incapable to act is not a sign or moderation or success. It just is a sign of a system no longer working.
Loki is talking out of his ass when he says 'this is what politicians have for a job'. That is simply nonsense; the job of a politician is to be in office on behalve of the people. The job of a politician is not to derail government altogether.
Congratulations America
Except these dingdongs have convinced themselves that government 'can't do anything right' so if it does nothing at all, that's the best case scenario. They're wrong of course, but their activity is self-fullfilling. As things worsen, they rail some more about how government can't do anything right and gain support because the situation seems to bear out their claims.
The Rules
Copper- behave toward others to elicit treatment you would like (the manipulative rule)
Gold- treat others how you would like them to treat you (the self regard rule)
Platinum - treat others the way they would like to be treated (the PC rule)
I know that (dare I say) meme and I call bullshit. Any politician should have as his goal to govern. To govern does not necessarily mean to be activist and overreach. It does include reducing the size of government through policy choices. Starving the beast as some on the right seem to think wise is merely politicians abdicating their single most important task.
If they really think government should be smaller, they should identify what needs to be eliminated and go about that. 'Starving the beast' means that you also endanger traditional government tasks because you're unable or unwilling to set an agenda. The end of that road is collapse of the system.
Congratulations America
Get a load of this one:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...110904767.htmlIn the wake of last week's GOP victories in the midterm elections, some conservative firebrands who have leveled harsh criticism at Washington officialdom will soon themselves become Capitol insiders.
Congressman-elect Allen West (R-Fla.), who rode the tea party wave to unseat Rep. Ron Klein (D-Fla.), has hired Joyce Kaufman, a local conservative talk radio commentator known for her provocative and sometimes incendiary statements, as his chief of staff.
In discussing the move on her show Tuesday afternoon, the husky-voiced radio commentator said she is excited to come to Washington and get a "bird's-eye view" of Congress. Kaufman dismissed the outgoing Democratic leadership as "garbage."
"Over these months I have been blessed to form very wonderful relationships with the West family," Kaufman said, adding that she had been a supporter of his campaign. "I looked at this family and [told] myself, how do you not fight and put them up on the pedestal when we've got this garbage up on the pedestal now, people like Nancy Pelosi?"
.......
Kaufman has been a prominent and controversial voice on the Florida political scene for decades. For example, according to the Miami New Times, she said about illegal immigrants on a 2007 show, "If you commit a crime while you're here, we should hang you and send your body back to where you came from, and your family should pay for it."
She reportedly told listeners that she quit buying cable from Comcast after the company's answering system asked callers to "Press 1 for English." She also reportedly criticized Publix, a regional supermarket chain, for publishing 2010 calendars that marked Islamic New Year on Dec. 7 instead of Pearl Harbor Day.
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2010/1...lk-radio-host/More recently, Ms. Kaufman cited an “exhaustive study” purportedly showing that “a vast number of Florida’s elementary and high school history and geography textbooks are Islam-slanted,” the paper says.
......
David Harris, president of the National Jewish Democratic Council, called Ms. Kaufman “incendiary,” citing other comments she has made about American Jews. She once said of Jews who voted for President Barack Obama, “They don’t embrace being Jews anymore. They have that diaspora mentality.”
“West demonstrated profoundly questionable judgment in choosing a radio host with no policy experience to be his chief of staff,” Mr. Harris said. “American Jews have every right to be outraged.”
Mr. West’s office did not return a call seeking comment.
In an appearance at a tea party rally last summer, Ms. Kaufman suggested that if her candidates didn’t achieve “substantial victory” on Election Day, she’d help lead a revolution.
Dumbest reason to object to the law. Stating that the state of OK will refuse to follow religious based law is a violation of the 1st amendment that prevents religious based law... lol.A Muslim activist in Oklahoma City, Muneer Awad, filed suit last week, alleging the measure violated the First Amendment, which forbids government from promoting an "establishment of religion" or interfering with "free exercise" of religion.
Fuzzy is right the law won't pass constitutional muster but for other reasons.
I'd change the quoted sentence to the following: it does include reducing or increasing the size of government when and where necessary, through policy choices.
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anyway, I can't wait for the moment when realisation dawn on the voters that the teabaggers they elected are worse than the people that were voted out.
You are right of course, but I was talking about the 'starve the beast' crowd. They are dead wrong; politicians aren't chosen to starve anything, they are chosen to govern.
Congratulations America
That's nice and naive. But what if the politician has an agenda he wants to push, or just wants power?
There is nothing nice or naive about it. It presumes the politician wants power; the power to influence the way a state is run. Not to abdicate that power at the moment he accepts being elected.
Congratulations America
This is like shooting fish in a barrel, but I don't think you understand the reasoning, which is why it appears dumb to you. If I propose a law that says the government will not be able to enact laws based on Religion X, but allows for laws to be passed based on religions Y and Z, the law is unconstitutional because it is inherently favoring one (or in this case multiple) religion(s) over another.
. . .
Abdicating power is to do nothing. Power to destroy something is power indeed. Look at the agenda: government is terrible, therefore you want small government. But how best to do so? Americans love their government (or at least they used to), and they won't let you eliminate programs. So instead cut the budgets and fail to enact efficiency programs. Soon government will truly suck, where before it was a mixed bag. Now you've greatly strengthened your platform, since more and more Americans believe that government sucks. Couple that strategy with deficit spending, and soon you'll actually be able to wholesale cut government programs, and be celebrated for it.
I'm not just speculating. This has been an overt policy proposal from conservative think tanks for decades. Just google "starve the beast" if you don't believe me.
Makes me wonder....what contrecoups Holland has, that the US doesn't.
It is still nonsense, because it doesn't only take away the power of the government to do the things these people don't like, it also undermines the government in executing those tasks that these people value. The smallest government is still a government, the beast starved stands for anarchy and basically for the end of the USA, the Republic and the Constitution.
Congratulations America
The country is smaller for starters, but what's more important, nobody has the power to either push through or block anything. You have the choice to be part of the consensus or not. The latter position means you have no influence over the outcome, the former means that you do have a say in the way the place is run. Of course we are a bit less hysterical about separation of powers when it comes to executive and legislative. Which expresses itself in the fact that the executive can't be merely in office. It can only be in office if there is a support for it in the legislative that actually makes it possible to carry out its tasks. In Dutch politics there is no gridlock thinkable as that would mean the executive doesn't have the trust of the legislative. Which means, the executive has to go, with the direct effect that the members of the legislative have to justify themselves in front of the electorate.Makes me wonder....what contrecoups Holland has, that the US doesn't.
No lame-duck prime minsters for us and no lame-duck sessions of parliament either.
Congratulations America
Because you have a constitution that protects civil rights or minority rights? We do too, supposedly. But it hasn't panned out that way for us, in the US. Do you think we're being hysterical about power separation, executive vs legislative? I'd like to believe our rights won't change with each election, or moving state-to-state, but that's being tested now. Made me wonder how European nationals view this sort of thing......
No, it is the combination of PR and the fact that the constitution effectively punishes executives and legislatives that don't work together. For the executive the punishment is being thrown out of office, for the legislative it is facing elections AND the responsability of forming a new government.
Our civil rights and minority rights don't really come into this.
Congratulations America
What do you mean by PR? Parliamentary Republic or Public Relations?
Proportional representation
Keep on keepin' the beat alive!
Puerto Rico.
no disagreement there.
You should disagree. Voters think they select politicians to best serve their interests. To a degree they are correct, but considering how much politicians lie to get voters to think the politician stands for something they don't, many voters don't really know what they voted for. Or, they voted for a compromise (e.g. "less government") without a choice about means.
Believing anything else in naive pollyanna land.
Most voters don't know what they want and are unwilling to make any kind of trade-offs. They simultaneously want tax cuts and spending increases. They want the deficit to be cut, but they're against cutting funding for any major program. They want other countries to buy American products, but want to put tariffs on imports. Of course the politicians pander to the voters, but it's up to the voters to punish politicians who run on a stupid platform.
Hope is the denial of reality
As Cain frequently pointed out, that is the flaw of representative democracy. The voters are actually quite ignorant. Heck, most of humanity is quite ignorant. It can reasonably said that a tiny fraction of humanity talent-wise has dragged the rest forward all this while.
And yet the voters in many other countries are willing to make the trade-offs I mentioned. The general public in most countries is uninformed, but at least it's willing to realize that everything has costs and benefits. The American public has never learned that reality.
Hope is the denial of reality
Why would that be? Really, why the US and not other developed countries?
God knows. I do know that Greece enacted sharp spending cuts and the socialist government did well in local elections. The current government in Britain won on a platform of making specific spending cuts (and tax increases). The Latvian government got reelected after severe spending cuts (and a double digit decrease in GDP). Merkel and Sarkozy are promising specific budget cuts, and though they've seen their ratings drop, they still have a shot at winning. In the US, no one even dares to make the argument that we need spending cuts and tax increases (or at least, they refuse to make specific proposals). And again, the problem isn't so much that the people are uninformed; it's that they expect some magical solution to the current problems, which anyone with half a brain should realize is not going to happen.
The interesting that is that until the '60s, both parties supported a balanced budget. The Democrats were willing to achieve it by tax increases and the Republicans by spending cuts, but neither seriously considered running a deficit to accomplish their objectives. I'm not sure if they did this due to public pressure (probably not), but they did it nevertheless. Then Kennedy started the ball rolling and things have only gotten worse (with the only real improvement coming from Bush Sr. and Clinton).
Hope is the denial of reality
We agree for the most part. But proportionately you can't say it got crazy until Reagan. But at least he had the (flimsy) excuse of putting pressure on the Soviets as a Cold War gambit. W pretty much had no excuse. And the GOP for the most part ran this last time on the platform of continuing the W tax cuts. Pure insanity.
The point is that once you decide that it's ok to run a deficit during non-recessions, you open the floodgates, and it was only a matter of time before "tolerable" levels increased from 1% of GDP to where we are now.
Hope is the denial of reality
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